By Heidi N. Moore

That’s because BB&T, a North Carolina bank, has donated over $30 million to 27 universities, including the University of North Carolina Charlotte, with the understanding that “Atlas Shrugged” would become required reading for students, according to Bloomberg. Last month BB&T agreed to donate $2 million to the University of Texas at Austin to create a chair in Objectivism, which would be the first in the country.

Some will applaud, and some will shudder. Rand is the uncompromising author of individualist screeds that all came together under the philosophy of “Objectivism,” which preaches the virtues of individuality and egoism –which, the author was always careful to say, is different from egotism.

Should Rand be part of the American canon? If you’ve read “Atlas Shrugged” or “The Fountainhead,” you’re already familiar with Rand’s belief that selfishness is the highest good. It’s also a play on the American qualities of independence and individuality, best expressed by Walt Whitman in his book of poetry, “Leaves of Grass.” The book includes the poem Song of Myself and was frequently gifted upon impressionable females by former president Bill Clinton.

There’s no question that Rand’s influence is already pervasive. By now, you know that Alan Greenspan was a disciple of Rand’s. The famous Gordon Gekko speech in Wall Street — though it was not written by Rand at all — was Randian in its philosophy: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good… Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

Rand’s writing echoes those sentiments, and you could probably mine her work for some bitterness against, say, the Fed’s abnormally strong intervention in the J.P. Morgan-Bear Stearns situation: “Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off,” Rand once wrote.

(Personally, we believe Rand is a better spokeswoman for architecture than anything else; we know two people who attended architecture school after being inspired by “The Fountainhead.”)

But Rand has a bit of a reputation problem among those who have not drunk the Kool-Aid. Greed and selfishness generally get a bad rap, no matter how you try to redefine them. Rand’s work can also be an obstacle to romance; this light essay on love noted that some women are turned off by men who claim Rand among their favorites. And there’s a my-way-or-the-highway absolutism about Rand’s work — “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil,” she once wrote — that may be at odds with today’s cooperative, interlocked financial system in which codependency is the rule. When a firm does refuse to go along with the others — think Bear Stearns at the time of Long-Term Capital Management — the grudge lasts for years and, according to some, may hold the seeds of their eventual destruction. For every individualist aficionado of Atlas Shrugged, there’s an ABC After-School Special that shows banks and other stewards of capital following whatever the cool kids are doing — like, say, lending money they can’t afford for $26 billion leveraged buyouts, or buying up mortgage securities they don’t fully understand.

Deal Journal readers, we put the question to you: Should there be more Ayn Rand to instruct young, impressionable minds? Or is the problem with capitalism today too much Rand already?

Comments (5 of 138)

This article, which is little more than an argument from intimidation (as it suggest that those who like the book have drank the Kool-Aid) is not a reasonable presentation of a question; it is clearly designed to encourage a "no" answer. Especially with the (tired) comparison of rational self interest and the greed the dishonest and corrupt Gordon Gekko speaks of in the movie Wall Street.

What a shameful piece of journalism that is shocking to see on a blog hosted by the Wall Street Journal.

10:40 pm November 11, 2008

Brendaveggie wrote :

BB&T is truly investing in our country's future. Kudos to one of the few banks left with integrity and admirable ideals.

2:40 am November 5, 2008

Brian Cunningham wrote :

Rand had more than her fair share of personal problems. And she said some things that were clearly wrong.

But the real nature of these (wrong) things is hard to tease out in a public discussion because her worst mistake was redefining words that already had well-established, specific meanings.

For example: selfishness and capitalism. Both of these words had negative meanings that she clearly understood. She chose to use them but to redefine them as "rational self interest" and "unknown ideal", and had an argument as to why this was necessary that simply never persuaded me...which was more or less that this redefinition had to be done to reclaim some sort of intellectual ground.

The effect of insisting on using redefined versions of common words is that she is consistently misread; and oddly, and perhaps revealingly, she seems to have intended this misreading by the "masses." It's as though she consciously created a "weeder" intro course on Objectivism that only a very few students could pass. If you could get past the redefinition of common words, and if you could understand that her comic book vision of the heroic was meant to be debated with her and previous A students (with whom you were not yet acquainted, and as long as you carefully adhered to the principle of "reason as our only absolute") then you too could be granted an A in Objectivism.

If all of this sounds like the work of a traumatized narcissist, that's probably true. In my personal opinion Rand's greatest problem in explication of her ideals was allowing her personal psychology to shine through. However, she recognized the potential that she was wrong in her details and stated that the principle of reason-as-absolute would correct those errors in the future. So far little luck on that front.

Now to the question posed: Should Ayn Rand be required reading? My answer is: it depends.

For example, should Atlas Shrugged be required reading? Hmm. Probably not. At least not until the student has slogged through Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. If you (the student) have read those and still want to read more, then the hairsplitting redefinition of words delights you and you can probably read Atlas Shrugged much as it was intended to be read. Otherwise, if you were, say, handed the book by someone who thought you were smart and attractive at a cocktail party, or if you were assigned it as your introduction to Ayn Rand by some random college professor it would surely seem completely nutty.

And there is the further problem that the main point is lost on most readers anyway. I once meant a fairly intelligent and very rich man who said that he didn't think the book was relevant anymore because it was about trains. I kid thee not.

Finally, in response to some of the comments above about current economic realities: Going bankrupt is not rational. Taking 700 billion dollars of other people's money to give to the bankrupt is not rational either. Granting a legal monopoly to a single international bank is not rational. And saying one is for the free market but only allowing one bank to run the whole show is not rational either. Rand would have repudiated Greenspan (like she did the Brandons and others) and held up Atlas Shrugged against current events as proof that she was right, not an admission that she was wrong.

But to see that you have to redefine all of the words you use. Which is why her Capitalism, by that name at least, will almost certainly remain unknown in practice.

1:16 pm October 23, 2008

Jack Crouch wrote :

Anyone over a certain age who still loves Ayn Rand doesn't understand (or worse, chooses to ignore) a basic fact about human nature: people will form gangs, and collude to trick other people. I'm fascinated by the idea that being dazzled by Rand may have made Alan Greenspan renege on his responsibilities to protect our investments, resulting in a subprime meltdown. I have just enough Objectivist in me to believe that Beliefs Matter. Despite it's charm, Objectivism is a net lose. We just flat have to cooperate sometimes. And marketplaces are artificial ecologies made partly by governments. Sorry folks. Game over for Objectivism.

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